To celebrate National Poetry Month, the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs (@NYCulture) hosted the ninth annual #PoetweetNYC Twitter poetry contest from April 16 to April 20, 2018. The winners were announced in Metro New York newspaper on Poem in Your Pocket Day (April 26, 2018) and on City social media channels.

#PoetweetNYC for Mother Earth

2018's contest coincided with the 40th year of operation of NYC's Materials for the Arts (@MFTAnyc) program - the City's premiere creative reuse center - and culminated the Friday before Earth Day (April 22). To celebrate these two auspicious events, this year we encouraged submissions on the theme of the environment and sustainability.

This was also the first year of the contest under Twitter's new, expanded character limit so entrants plumbed the depths of their feelings toward Mother Earth.

Contest Judges

For 2018, the followingesteemed panel of judges selected this year's winning poetweets:

Compost: Your dinner's ghost
Haunting a plant with carbon's past
Allowing it to boast.
Take an oath to growth and cycle what we sow
Or low and behold, you've trifled all we know.
Almost, ever growing close
To seeing the freeing of seedlings vast
Honoring our host.#poetweetNYC

#PoetweetNYC I found one man's trash turned it to treasure/an aluminum crown adorns me as I run towards forever/another's empty box became my sacred trove/what they discard/I mold into art and let natural beauty rove.

Celebrate Poem in Your Pocket Day with fellow poetry lovers from across the U.S. using #pocketpoem. Poetry is everywhere if you look for it. Use #NationalPoetryMonth all month long to follow along with National Poetry Month activities across in New York and across the country.